A major gift for galloping into scandal

March 19, 2003 — 11.00am

Major Ronald Ferguson, who died on Sunday aged 71, would probably have remained in comparative obscurity as a polo player and administrator of the sport had it not been for the marriage of his daughter Sarah into the royal family.

As it was, after Sarah Ferguson married Prince Andrew in 1986, her father became something of a public figure in his own right, his every activity - and in particular his occasional romantic indiscretions - of consuming interest to the tabloid press.

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Ferguson was a bluff, uncomplicated former soldier, and although he and his family were no strangers to royalty or to the protocol around it, he was ill equipped to negotiate the perilous intrigues of court life.

Flattery was not among his vices (he habitually referred to the senior courtiers at Buckingham Palace as "toadies"), and he became embittered about the way in which he and his daughter had been, as he saw it, ill used by the royal family.

In 1994 Ferguson published an autobiography, The Galloping Major. Its subtitle, My Life in Singular Times, appeared to signify his bewilderment at the furore which greeted some of his more vivid escapades.

The most famous of these was his patronage of the Wigmore Club, a health club and massage parlour in London staffed by girls who, dressed in starched white "medical" gowns, allegedly offered a la carte sexual services to members.

In 1988 a tabloid newspaper printed a sensational story about Ferguson's membership of the Wigmore. While he maintained that he had used the club "for massage only ... and by that I mean a totally straight one" and as "a kind of cocoon where I could shut myself away for an hour and think", he was not re-elected to his post as deputy chairman of the Guards Polo Club.

Ferguson issued a statement saying: "I have not been sacked. I have not resigned. I was not re-elected as deputy chairman for 1988-9 and was not prepared to accept the alternative position ... Having given a lifetime of devotion and dedication to the Guards Polo Club, I feel very sad and extremely angry at the way the whole matter has been handled."

There were also rumours that Ferguson's departure was prompted by a management consultants' report that had identified financial irregularities at the club. Ferguson denied any wrongdoing, claiming he had been made a "scapegoat".

What really rankled, however, was the reaction of Prince Philip. According to Ferguson: "I was deeply wounded by Prince Philip's refusal, as president of the club, to discuss it with me. I made repeated requests to see him, and appointments were made which were subsequently cancelled."

Ferguson continued in his role as polo manager to the Prince of Wales, a post he had occupied since 1972. His job was to arrange the Prince's schedule of matches, fitting them in around his official engagements, and to look after his ponies and equipment.

This relationship came to an end in 1993 after more adverse press coverage. This time Ferguson was in trouble over his connection with Lesley Player, a woman with whom he had organised a ladies' international polo tournament. First there were allegations of improper financial dealings surrounding the tournament, then of an affair between Ferguson and Player, who later wrote a book stating, among other things, that the major had "terrible legs".

In February 1993 Ferguson's position with the Prince was "abruptly terminated in a letter to me from his private secretary ... After serving him faithfully and unquestioningly for 21 years, I was appalled by the way it was handled. The Prince of Wales did not have the guts to send for me and tell me straight to my face."

By this time the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of York had broken down, and Ferguson added in his autobiography: "The impression was that [the Prince] had been advised to perform a royal version of ethnic cleansing by getting rid of the Ferguson family from his circle."

In the same year Ferguson parted company with the Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club, where he had gone as director of sponsorship after leaving the Guards Polo Club in 1988. He was clearly embittered, complaining of being "shunned by the polo fraternity in Britain". He continued his association with the game in the US, where he organised polo matches for charity.

Ronald Ivor Ferguson was born at his parents' house in Regents Park, London, on October 10, 1931. Nine years later his father was given command of the Life Guards, a senior British Army regiment, as had his own father and grandfather before him. Young Ferguson's mother was a granddaughter of the 6th Duke of Buccleuch, and through both parents he could trace his ancestry to Charles II. His mother, indeed, flew into a towering rage when a newspaper referred to Sarah Ferguson as "a middle-class farmer's daughter".

Ronald had his first pony at the age of two, the start of a lifelong love affair with horses and with riding. As a small boy, he was known as "Baby Ogre" for his naughtiness (he once hijacked his grandfather's battery-powered wheelchair, driving it into an ornamental lake). At nursery school he received a report which said he was "trying" - an assessment that pleased his mother, until she discovered that a fellow pupil had been described as "very trying".

Going on to Ludgrove and then Eton, Ferguson occupied himself almost exclusively with sport - by his own admission he was not academically gifted. Aged 17, he emulated his father, grandfather and great-grandfather by joining the Life Guards; from the Mons Cadet School, he went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where he continued to devote himself to sport and added debutante parties to his curriculum.

In 1952 Ferguson was posted to Germany as a second lieutenant with A Squadron, in which he was to remain for the rest of his army career. Two years later he was sent to Egypt, where he played polo for the first time.

He met his first wife, Susan Wright, at a debutante dance in 1955, when she was only 17; they married the following year. In late 1958 Ferguson was posted to Aden, without his wife, although she joined him later.

The family, now including two daughters, Jane and Sarah, was back in England in 1959, when Ferguson was promoted to staff captain, London district, on Horse Guards Parade. In this role he had the opportunity to do a job he loved, organising ceremonial duties. After Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965 Ferguson oversaw the burial in Bladon churchyard, Oxfordshire.

In the winter of 1963-64 Ferguson was playing polo in India when he was appointed to take over command of his squadron in Cyprus, as part of a UN peacekeeping force sent to defuse increasing tension between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

Ferguson's father died in 1966, leaving him the 355-hectare family farm at Dummer in Hampshire. Two years later Ferguson left the army, having orchestrated a highly successful military tattoo which he took to Philadelphia, Boston and New York. In 1969 Ferguson landed a job at the Mayfair offices of the public relations firm Neilson McCarthy, before being appointed deputy chairman of the Guards Polo Club in 1971.

In his early years a keen shot, Ferguson gave up the sport not long after he left the army, deciding that he "no longer had the right to take an animal's or bird's life".

He made a recovery after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, and helped to raise funds for charities associated with the disease, but fell ill again in 2001.

In 1974 Ferguson was divorced from his first wife, Susan, who then married the Argentine polo player Hector Barrantes; she died in a car accident in 1998. In 1976, Ferguson married Susan Deptford; they had a son and two daughters.